Expense Account Dining: More McDonald's Than 'Mad Men'
The 15 Most Popular Restaurants for Business Travelers
Road warriors know that business travel can be far from glamorous — a seemingly endless series of meetings broken up by long stretches behind the wheel or in cramped airplane seats. And despite the occasional great meal, expense account dining isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, either.
That’s made clear by a new quarterly report from Certify, which provides software for companies and employees to manage their expenses. The company used millions of receipts and vendor ratings from business people to compile rankings of the most commonly expensed restaurants and those with the highest ratings.
Unsurprisingly, Starbucks was the most commonly expensed restaurant, accounting for 4.7 percent of receipts submitted for reimbursement. McDonald’s and Subway were next on the list, with the burger chain the most common choice for dinners and the sandwich chain the top pick for lunches. Fast food chain Chick-fil-A received the top rating among restaurants, with a 4.5 average on a scale from 1 to 5. The days of the three Martini lunch are clearly long gone.
Related: 9 Ways McDonald’s Wants to Get You Excited About Its Food Again
Certify also reported that business travelers continue to increasingly choose Uber and Airbnb over taxis and hotels. Airbnb grew 143 percent in receipts in the second quarter of the year, though it remains far behind hotels like Marriott and Hampton Inn in popularity. Rental cars still dominated the group transportation receipts (45 percent), but Uber made up 31 percent of receipts, an increase of 8 percentage points from this time last year. For the first time ever, Uber was more popular than taxis, which made up 24 percent of receipts.
Chart of the Day: Long Way to Go on Coronavirus Testing
The White House on Friday unveiled plans for a new effort to ramp up testing for Covid-19, which experts say is an essential part of limiting the spread of the virus. This chart from Vox gives a sense of just how far the U.S. has to go to catch up to other countries that are dealing with the pandemic, including South Korea, the leading virus screener with 3,692 tests per million people. The U.S., by comparison, has done about 23 tests per million people as of March 12.
After Spending $2 Billion, Air Force Bails Out on Planned Upgrades of B-2 Bombers
The Air Force has scrapped a planned upgrade of its B-2 stealth bomber fleet — even after spending $2 billion on the effort — because defense contractor Northrup Grumman didn’t have the necessary software expertise to complete the project on time and on budget, Bloomberg’s Anthony Capaccio reports, citing the Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer.
Ellen Lord, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, told reporters that the nearly $2 billion that had already been spent on the program wasn’t wasted because “we are still going to get upgraded electronic displays.”
Big Hurdle for Sanders’ Plan to Cancel Student Debt
Bernie Sanders wants to eliminate $1.6 trillion in student debt, to be paid for by a tax on financial transactions, but doing so won’t be easy, says Josh Mitchell of The Wall Street Journal.
The main problem for Sanders is that most Americans don’t support the plan, with 57% of respondents in a poll last fall saying they oppose the idea of canceling all student debt. And the politics are particularly thorny for Sanders as he prepares for a likely general election run, Mitchell says: “Among the strongest opponents are groups Democrats hope to peel away from President Trump: Rust Belt voters, independents, whites, men and voters in rural areas.”
Number of the Day: $7 Million
That’s how much Michael Bloomberg is spending per day in his pursuit of the Democratic presidential nomination, according to new monthly filings with the Federal Election Commission. “In January alone, Bloomberg dropped more than $220 million on his free-spending presidential campaign,” The Hill says. “That breaks down to about $7.1 million a day, $300,000 an hour or $5,000 per minute.”